#carrie-vaughn — Public Fediverse posts

As a mail subscriber to #AsimovsScienceFiction magazine, I get a vote in their 2025 reader's awards. It was fun to go back and re-read my favourite stories for the year to decide my rankings:

Best Novella:
1. Quantum Ghosts, #NancyKress
2. The Chronolithographer's Assistant, #SuzannePalmer
3. Spare Parts for the Mind, #GregEgan

Best Novelette:
1. Most Things, #RichLarson
2. On the Night Shift, #ZoharJacobs
3. The Fight Goes On, #HarryTurtledove

Best Short Story:
1. Catch a Tiger in the Snow, #RayNayler
2. Lolo's Last Run, #EMKerkman
3. Woolly, #CarrieVaughn

Best Poem:
1. I Try to Explain the Concept of Teeth to My Alien Roommate, #RachelLinton

Best Cover:
1. July/August, #MaurizioManzieri (attached image)

- My subscription started after the Jan/Feb issue, so that got snubbed.
- For all that print #SciFi magazines are now extremely marginal commercially and culturally, this one at least still attracts some pretty great material (mixed in, admittedly, with some so-so stuff) including by veteran greats of the genre - Kress and Turtledove are still producing amazing work in their mid-late 70s!
- I found the Novella section hardest to trim down to 3, with narrow cuts for stories by T.R. Napper, Ted Kosmatka, and John Kessel.
- It was a great year for pets in SF stories, or maybe as a dog- and cat-lover I'm just sucker for them. I found a place in my heart for Lolo, Magritte, Goobler the miniature woolly mammoth, Sponge, and of course, the tiger in the snow!

#alphabetchallenge #bookchallenge K is for Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn #carrievaughn #kittynorville #urbanfantasy #werewolf #radioshow #talkshow #DualIdentity #supernatural #SupernaturalSeries #feminist #bookseries #booksky #booktok #bookstagram #ttrpgpodcast #gamemastersbookclub https://www.k-squareproductions.com/gmbc

Book 6: “The Naturalist Society” by #CarrieVaughn.

Really great premise that’s marred by a largely uninterrogated colonialist worldview: Arcane Taxonomy grants a portion of the magic from the thing that’s named. Primarily birds. Vaughn isn’t ignorant of the dynamics this creates for queers, women, and POC (our MCs), or that Western ways of knowing and naming aren’t the end-all, be-all. But the engine driving everything remains the will to conquer.

@bookstodon #Bookstodon #Books

Live in BCS #392, Fifteenth Anniversary Double-Issue: "The Tyrant’s Heir’s Tale" by Carrie Vaughn.

"He had rehearsed what he would say and was determined now to watch their expressions. To see if this was a revelation for them—or if they already knew. “We’re expanding the palace kitchens, putting in a new hearth and tables. The builders knocked out a wall—turns out it was a closet that had been sealed up. In the closet was a body.”"

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-tyrants-heirs-tale/
#fantasy #sff #carrievaughn

WELP.

Since my Wednesday night game got cancelled, I sat down and finished reading #Questworld, by #CarrieVaughn.

It's basically "Westworld, but with Dragons." And as a bonus, it's got actual thoughts about nerdery and escapism, instead of being a "I AM THE HERO AND NOW EVERYONE LOVES ME" power fantasy you get in a lot of other portal/isekai works these days.

Definitely worth a read for all y'all #bookstodon folks.

Recently finished reading _Martians Abroad_ by #CarrieVaughn (2016 pub date).
It read like a #Heinlein juvenile (ala _Farmer in the Sky), but I mean that in a good way. Problem solving kid with spunk navigates space treachery. I enjoyed it, but in a #bookclub comment, I felt the last chapter was tacked on after the fact, and the second to last chapter would have made a stronger ending. #bookstodon